Just a quick update before running out the door to the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls…this is going to be a weekend about the LHOP musical. I’ll be seeing the theatre, meeting visitors, signing autographs and talking about the show. I’ll let you all know how it goes.
This weekend Katherine and I traveled to Minneapolis to see the LHOP musical twice at the magnificent Guthrie Theater. We were knocked out. The show builds its plot around the premise that Laura is a willful “wild child” who embraces self sacrifice and learns the important lesson that love and connectedness is the source of life’s greatest happiness and freedom.
It was great to see my Laura on stage as Caroline. While Melissa is a newcomer to the musical theater she came through huge, creating the show’s seminal emotional moment in the closing measures of “Wild Child”. There were tears all around. My old West Side Story buddy, Steve Blanchard as “Pa”, captured the wandering spirit of Charles and sang beautifully as the leader of the Ingalls family. But the show belongs to Laura, Mary, Nellie Oleson, and Almanzo…with very strong support from a very spunky and funny Carrie. The character focus of the musical is just as Laura Ingalls Wilder intended it…on the children. The show’s most memorable song — I’ll Be Your Eyes — is sung by Laura and Mary after Mary goes blind. Its terrific.
As in the series, the tension between Laura and Nellie in the musical is pivotal and its set up very effectively as the Ingalls girls prepare to enter school for the first time. Nellie is a worthy antagonist…funny and self absorbed but ultimately resigned when Laura and Almanzo become husband and wife.
Ah yes…Almanzo. At the Guthrie Kevin Massey plays Almanzo with a quiet confidence and focus that is heroic and compelling. His songs reveal his character in a way that Little House readers will love. The dynamic between the Laura and Almanzo absolutely works and that’s why the show pays off in such a satisfying way in the end.
Those who saw it know…those who haven’t will definitely want to beginning in the summer of 2009. All comments are most welcome.
Dean